7 Female Artists To Uncover This Summer

Gender is a hot topic on discussion panels worldwide at the moment: women in politics and economics, women in fashion and design, and women in entertainment and big business.

The art world always responds to and anticipates the movements in the sociopolitical sphere, and this year big museums and gigantic galleries have booked women-only shows. Hauser Wirth & Schimmel opened their Los Angeles outpost with a show featuring only women, the Saatchi Gallery in London has an all-women program and DKNY is in talks with the New Museum in New York to do a series of women-only shows.

But it’s not just the behemoths that are paying closer attention to women: interesting exhibits and reveals are everywhere else, too.

We rounded up seven less commercial artists that are opening shows this summer, from New York to South Africa to online, and you should check them out.

Isabel Lewis

Isabel Lewis

Berlin-based and Dominican-born, Lewis is opening her show “Occasions and other occurrences” in New York, transforming the industrial space with a selected collection of furniture and foliage. As collaboration, the smell researcher, Sissel Tolaas, will be on hand with her series of olfactory explorations.

Lewis, who has a background in literary criticism and choreography, uses events like “Occasions and other occurrences” to “bring together elements of sound, dance, performance, spoken word, taste and even smell, and thus experiences that activate all the senses while pushing the boundaries of exhibition and theater.”

Hayv Kahraman

Hayv Kahraman

Currently living in Los Angeles, Kahraman is an Iraqi-émigré who moved to Sweden as a child. With these international influences, she takes her work to a place where contemplations about gender are pivotal.

Her latest show is part of four solo shows at Jack Shainman’s The School in upstate New York entitled “A Change of Place: Four Solo Exhibitions,” and explores issues surrounding the violence of sound and the ways in which people resist it.

Mariko Mori

Mariko Mori

From Tokyo, Mori – Japan’s favorite contemporary artist and a torch bearer for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games – is opening her “Ring: One with Nature” project in collaboration with the Olympic Games. Unveiled in August, this piece will be donated to Brazil as a permanent sculpture.

Fusing art, technology and nature, Mori’s work is a ring that hovers atop a waterfall in a nature reserve that will align with the solstice sun, representing unity and oneness.

“’Ring’ signifies oneness, eternity and completeness. It is a true privilege to present this work during a moment of international unity that is the Rio Olympic Games,” says Mori. “Ring” is Mariko Mori’s second and most ambitious work to date, to be realized by the Faou Foundation and is part of the Foundation’s larger mission to place site-specific artworks on the six habitable continents.

Kate Banazi

Kate Banazi

London and Sydney-based Banazi has revealed her latest project – Perspex and silkscreen images. “My work is all hand silkscreened, but leaning away from the idea of a facsimile reproduction towards embracing the texture and unexpected nuances of the printmaking process,” she said. “My method is intuitive and pieces are built from shapes often taken from my life or landscape drawings, repeated and interlocked – each position effecting the next.”

As part of a group exhibition, celebrating the launching of Look Up Prints, the artist will launch her latest series of prints.

Claire Oswalt

Claire Oswalt

Based in Austin, Texas Oswalt’s work spans drawing, painting and sculpture. She has worked with everyone including the Ace Hotel, the Line Hotel in LA, Hopewell Workshop and Textiles. Right now she has revealed a sculpture included in the design collection for Chamber New York, curated by Andrew Zuckerman and will soon reveal a new collection of collages.

“The only rule I maintain is to trust my intuition,” she says. “My work depends on the energy behind quick decisions and the ruthlessness to pair down to the essential.”

Zanele Muholi

Zanele Muholi

As part of a group show in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa, Stevenson Gallery is opening “The Quiet Violence of Dreams,” featuring Zanele Muholi, a photographer and visual activist. For this show Muholi will show a selection of photographs grappling with sexual violence from her first body of work, “Only Half the Picture.”

It is the first time in a decade that this body of work will be exhibited in Cape Town.

Turiya Magadlela

Turiya Magadlela

Turiya Magadlela, who primarily works with fabrics, will also be at “The Quiet Violence of Dreams.” Her work addresses institutional violence and institutionalization with prison uniform fabrics. For the show, she will present a new installation in Stevenson’s Johannesburg space.

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